The Therapist

Friday, December 12, 2008

Guy From Metallica's "One" Video Disenfranchised From Franken Vote

Minneapolis--Even as the razor-thin margins are tallied in the still-ongoing Minnesota recount, controversy still manages to haunt the Coleman campaign.

Challenger Al Franken's campaign, currently trailing by a little more than 200 votes, has produced a continual stream of voters claiming their votes were disenfranchised, either by clerical technicalities, or by politically-motivated malfeasance.

Now, the armless, legless, earless, eyeless and faceless man featured in Metallica's One video has come forward claiming that his vote for Al Franken has been marginalized because of problems with identity verification.

"Hold my breath as I wish for death," he says. "Please God help me."

Theman, whose name is Joe Bonham, is part of a growing consensus that continued voter disenfranchisement by the political right is fostering a climate of cynicism and despair--most clearly articulated by Bonham.

Franken's campaign claims it lays hold to "literally hundreds" of examples of anecdotal testimony from constituents with generally far less pitiful circumstances by which they've also found themselves shoved to the margins of the electoral spectrum.

"The Coleman campaign has clearly singled out those voters most photogenically pathetic and exploitable to us." said Franken. "But to us, they're good enough, smart enough, and likeable."

Bonham's ballot is one of many that are part of a larger challenge by the Franken campaign, who claim his vote was disenfranchised because Bonham provided no valid form of identification when his oxygen tent was rolled up to a Minneapolis voting site. Sources claim that Bonham's balloting was "erratic at best," and "displays a fundamental disorientation with the process."